Jara

Last Friday I spent most of the afternoon at the library researching castles.  And last night, I spent most of the evening researching tents and glass.

Now I know why almost all fantasy books happen in the woods... you don't have to research trees and campfires... they really haven't changed much in the last couple thousand years.

But buildings... they are driving me crazy.  Yes, Chris, I know I'm obsessive, but that's who I am. **grin**

The hero's based in a garrison of a stone castle, and the heroine lives in a post-and-beam wooden structure with a central court yard.  I'm happy to have that pretty well figured out, finally.

And, tents, you may ask, why tents?  Because when you have a bunch of newbie firestarters, you don't want them practicing in a town of wooden buildings and risk burning down the whole place.  So they practice far away from town, in a small training camp with large sleeping and dining tents.  I knew the heroine's people had canvas tents, but I knew they weren't cotton, because cotton came from the new world... so what were the tents made of?  Come to find out it was hemp canvas, just like sailing ship's sails were made of.  Cool!  :-)

Why glass? Because I really want windows.  And given I have firestarters, I've decided that I can have glass, too.

The next thing to research is a point that Chris brought up... why in the world is the hero back at the castle instead out on campaign or at his own estate?  Going to have to research military stuff for a bit to figure that one out.

I guess the good news is that I'll have plenty of fodder for the "Researching" class I'm teaching in a couple weeks.  :-)

Yesterday, I put the snail-mail submission package in the mail... which was an experience given that the clerk at the post office hadn't done an international return coupon in a long while.  At one point they had three gals working on trying to figure out what had to be done for one.  :-)  But it's off.

And today, I sent off two queries.

The hurry-up-and-wait submission process is underway.

But the even bigger news is that yesterday I cleaned off my desk.  :-)  I know it doesn't sound like much, but believe me, it's major.  :-)

Jara's story is still cogitating in the ether, while I try and get caught up with stuff around here.  Now that Sarah is off, Jane is starting to pester me.  Which is good, as hers is the next book that I "should" be writing.  But since I rarely listen to "shoulds", I'll not push her faster than she wants to be pushed.

So, today is work on paying work that I should have been doing yesterday, but I broke the website and need to try and figure out "why" when there aren't any people on it.  Plus a ton of stuff to do around the house.  Never a dull moment.  :-)

This morning I worked through the details of how the hero saved the day and the consequences thereof.  Which left me with all the tons of stuff that needs to be foreshadowed, which is what I've been waiting for.  Because how can I know what scenes I need to write before I know what scenes need to be foreshadowed.  So, tons of work, but now I have a direction.

Good news/bad news, this also led me to yet another book, as one of the side characters suddenly became much more interesting.  *sigh*  Just what I need.

Also good news/bad news, in the last week I've gotten direction on several other major projects... my "I hate computers" project has finally turned itself around, plus several others.  Which in a way is good, as I like having specific things to do and goals to work towards... except that I didn't need them to all come to fruition in the same week!!

On top of that, my father called yesterday and asked a huge favor, which he rarely does. So, since he's a great father, plus the fact that he's been my sole financial support for the last six months... I wasn't about to turn him down.  But it means that I'm gone from Tuesday of this week through Saturday.  So all my plans to get to work on all these projects this week, which I had free before my contract job starts back up, just got all shot to hell.

Oh well, if nothing else, life remains interesting.  And now I'm off to take #1-son back to school for his last semester of college before he graduates... scary thought.

This morning, while I was lazing around reading instead of doing all the stuff I should be doing, I finally figured out how Jara's hero saves the day... of course at great cost to himself, and by extension at great cost to Jara.  But he heroically saves the day, which was the piece I needed before I could go on with the story.

Which is good news, but of course now the problem is finding the time to implement it.  Always a challenge.

I've been playing with Jara's plot, and this morning I finally pinned down the black moment.  I knew it on some level, but today I finally put it into words.  Which is going to help because now I know where I'm going... which is going to make it easier to get there.  :-)

But I'm mostly caught up with last minute Christmas stuff, so I may not have time to do much with this for a while.  We shall see.

I slept most of today away, again.  I'm not sure if it's a cold or allergies, but I'm feeling rotten.  This evening I finally found enough energy to crawl out of bed and watch TV with the youngest.

While we did that, I pulled out the white-board and arranged all the sticky-notes I'd made of the various bits and pieces of history for Jara's book. 

When I started they were completely random, but after a considerable amount of arranging, they're in order.

I know I'm not done with the history of the book, but it's a good start.  And the sticky-notes make it easy to rearrange and add things. Read more

The last couple days have been crazy-busy, so today I finally finished typing in all the notes and words for Jara's story.

Total book count so far:  28,026 words

Total NaNoWriMo count: 17.445 words

Total count of notes and backstory: 7,909 words

Which is all well and good, but I've now got to sit down and see where the story is going so I can tell if there is more that I can do before I start the rewrite.  As I've written, I've changed so much of the premise that I think I'm at the point were I have to just start the blasted thing over again.

Which is perfectly fine.  :-)  It means that I've got the raw draft done, and I'm starting on the first draft. Read more

I got stuck... way stuck in Jara's story.  I've change so much of the premise and setting since I began the story that I'm not sure where it's going.

In addition, I filled the one notebook and began on the next.  Except, I didn't learn my lesson last time and nothing in the notebook I just finished is typed into the computer.  Which is driving me bug-nuts because I don't know what I've written so far, and I can't find this note or that note.

So, instead of writing, I spent NaNoWriMo #14 thru today typing in the stuff in the notebook.  Unfortunately, I'm only about 3/4 of the way through it. 

Stupid, stupid, stupid to leave it this long.  I swore after I did this the last time that I wasn't going to do it again... but I did.

So, now I'm swearing it again:  First thing every morning, I'm going to type in the stuff I wrote long-hand the day before. Read more

I got a few words yesterday.  I'll count them up later because I switched notebooks, which means that I changed the rough words-per-page count, so have to establish a new baseline before I can give a word count.

But for the most part I was stuck.  Sure I was writing stuff, but most of it was summary because there really didn't seem to be too much happening in the scene.  And the heroine was sitting back at home twiddling her thumbs, waiting for the hero to save the day.  Booooorrrrring. Read more

I got a few new words yestersday, which puts the story up to 23,800 and NaNoWriMo count up to 13,500...

But what I got was a new twist in the relationships of the hero, which totally changes his motivations.  He basically does what he did before, but for totally different reasons, and with much greater passion, because it now really matters to him, rather than just following orders.

The problem is that I have to rethink all of the book up to this point before I can go on.  I'm not going to rewrite the beginning, but I have to rethink and make notes of what changes, so I can figure out what he's going to do next, based on all these new motivations.

Which is all a good thing, but means many backstory words, but not necessarily any new story words for today.